An autograph signed letter from Ringo Starr on joining the Beatles and the release of their first single Love Me Do which features the sentence “I got a phone call asking me would I join the Beatles and I said yes” is among the highlights of the July 10 Books and Manuscripts auction at Christie’s London.
The three-page October 31, 1962, letter by Starr (Sir Richard Starkey) is one of five known to be written over the next 18 months to he recipient Doreen Walker who is believe to have met him during one of his Butlins residencies in summer 1961. Starr then lists upcoming Beatles tour dates with Helen Shapero, Eden Kane and Frank Ifield, a performance at the Liverpool Empire with Little Richard, and a television recording and performance in Doreen’s home town of Manchester at the Oasis club. It has an estimate of £30,000 – £40,000.
Also going under the hammer is the banjo played by Rod Davis and John Lennon in The Quarrymen from 1956-1957 (estimate: £10,000 – £15,000).
Other highlights include:
* Prime Minister William Gladstone’s personal copy of the first edition of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776) which has an estimate of £70,000 – £100,000
* The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone (London: G. Routledge, 1858) owned by Oscar Wilde as a schoolboy in Ireland and inscribed ‘Oscar Wilde’ with the date ‘March 18th 1868’ and a further annotation in his hand on page 13 recording Dr Johnson as the source of a line in Oliver Goldsmith’s The Traveller (estimate: £3,000 – £5,000)
* the exceptionally rare first edition by Alfred Russel Wallace of On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species in The Annals and Magazine of Natural History (Volume XVI, Second Series. London: Taylor and Francis, 1855). Known as the ‘Sarawak Law’ paper, this was a major landmark in the history of evolutionary theory and Christie’s have been unable to trace any other copy at auction (estimate: £30,000 – £50,000)
* a presentation copy of the first edition of Orlando (London: The Hogarth Press, 1928) inscribed “Margaret / from Virginia / with love” by Virginia Woolf to Margaret Llewelyn Davies (1861-1944), a socialist, feminist and pacifist who was a leading activist in the co-operative movement and also a close friend of Leonard Woolf (estimate £4,000 – £6,000)
* an early pair of English table globes (circa 1690) featuring a terrestrial globe and a celestial globe (estimate £100,000 – £150,000)
